{"id":2130,"date":"2025-10-26T14:22:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2025-10-26T14:22:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:22:57","slug":"the-white-houses-east-wing-is-now-demolished-heres-what-was-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2130","title":{"rendered":"The White House\u2019s East Wing is now demolished. Here\u2019s what was lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the rubble and rancor memorializing where the East Wing of the White House once stood, President Donald Trump and his team are trying to dig out. Public outrage has been piling up over the\u00a0sudden demolition\u00a0to make way for the sprawling,\u00a0golden ballroom\u00a0he has long craved. Trump says the new construction will be a monument to the country\u2019s greatness, even as his team insists there is nothing unusual in how he is going about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House \u2026 has made modernizations and renovations of their own,\u201d insists White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.<\/p>\n

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First lady Rosalynn Carter works in her East Wing office on March 17, 1977. – Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum\/National Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Author Kate Andersen Brower, who has written extensively about The People\u2019s House, agrees with that foundational claim, but also points out a big difference this time: \u201cWe have never seen a wrecking ball taken to an entire wing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never mind that Trump has dismissed the East Wing as \u201ca very small building\u201d that was \u201cnever thought of as being much.\u201d Brower and plenty of others saw it as a treasure. \u201cI certainly had a lot of reverence for it because it was the first lady\u2019s domain. It\u2019s the only place she has to really call her own,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Vice President Dick Cheney with senior staff members in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on September 11, 2001. – Everett\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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President George W. Bush prepares for his State of the Union address in the East Wing family theater of the White House on January 19, 2004. – Eric Draper\/Bush Library\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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President Bill Clinton watches the Super Bowl with Texas Gov. Ann Richards and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo as Chelsea Clinton sits at her father’s feet holding Socks, the family cat, in the East Wing family theater in January 1993. – Clinton Library\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Initially a carriage entrance during the term of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, it became the modern East Wing as millions of tourists see it each year \u2014 or did \u2014 under his distant cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt some 40 years later. The build-out was a practical matter: With World War II raging, an emergency underground bunker had been constructed on the spot and needed the building to hide it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in a sense,\u201d Brower says, \u201cit\u2019s always been a bit of an afterthought, and some people within the White House call it Siberia because \u2026 you always want to be as close to the West Wing and the Oval Office as possible, and the East Wing is obviously removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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